


Constant

by MontanaHarper



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, mentions of human experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/MontanaHarper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Our target is a domestic terrorist going by the codename of Psylocke," Clay said.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coinin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coinin/gifts).



**WASHINGTON**

Cougar was already dressed in civvies and in the process of double-checking his gear when Clay banged twice on the door of the motel room, signalling that it was time to roll out. He grabbed the nondescript duffel that was replacing his rucksack for the mission, adjusted his hat, and followed Pooch out to where Roque, Clay, and the new tech guy were waiting beside a rusting Bronco in the motel parking lot.

Once they were on the road, Clay pulled up the mission briefing and tilted the tablet so Cougar could see the only photo in the dossier, a blurry black-and-white image obviously taken by a security camera. 

"Our target is a domestic terrorist going by the codename of Psylocke," Clay said. "He lives alone on a big chunk of property in the middle of nowhere, and about the only thing we know for sure is that he's booby-trapped the hell out of it. We'll get Cougar set up outside the perimeter, ready to take him down once he's out in the open."

Roque snorted. "For that, they need us?"

"You'd rather take on an _actual_ telekinetic superheroine?" Pooch asked with a laugh. When he didn't get a reaction, he glanced over his shoulder at them. "Psylocke is— You know what? Never mind."

Cougar spent the rest of the drive going through the satellite images, handing the tablet back to Clay with his first, second, and third choices for position marked.

*

It had been about three hours since Cougar settled in, front door of the cabin in his scope. Behind him he could hear the telltale sounds of the rest of the team getting a little restless: a whisper-soft shift of fabric, a barely there scrape of boots on dirt. There was nothing but the waiting now.

Just before noon, an older minivan pulled up to the cabin and a woman—early twenties probably; pretty, blonde, and petite—got out. Close on her heels was a little girl so similar in looks that she could only be the woman's daughter.

"Boss," Cougar said softly, not taking his eye off the scope as the woman and child made their way to the front door. "He's got company."

Clay hummed a quiet acknowledgement. The door opened and Cougar, finger still resting lightly against the trigger guard, waited for him to evaluate the situation. The figure in the doorway looked enough like the blurry security camera photo and Cougar had a clear shot, but he hesitated. Something about the mission didn't feel right, and it was more than just qualms about taking the man out with a headshot in front of a child.

When Clay finally said "hold," the order was almost drowned out by the sound of their radios crackling to life.

"Status report," an unfamiliar voice drawled over what was theoretically a secure comm channel. It was a clear break in mission protocol; they were supposed to maintain radio silence until they were ready for extraction. Cougar's sense that something was off intensified, and he had to squash the urge to glance over his shoulder at the quiet creak of the Bronco's open tailgate, where Travis had the main transceiver set up.

Clay keyed his throat mic and said, "There are civilians with the target: a woman and a child. As soon as they clear the area, we'll proceed with the mission."

"Negative." The guy might as well have been ordering a pizza, for all the concern in his voice. "Proceed with the mission immediately. Anyone at that location is a target. There are no civilians."

"What?" Roque said, his disbelief echoing Cougar's thoughts. "We're a death squad now, Clay?"

On the porch, the man was smiling at the woman and child and stepping to the side so that they could enter the cabin, but he didn't immediately follow them in. Instead, he tilted his chin up and seemed to stare directly at Cougar, eyes sharp behind the round lenses of his glasses. Unnerved despite knowing that there was no way the guy could have spotted him, Cougar pulled back from the scope and looked to where Clay and Roque were standing almost shoulder to shoulder. 

When Clay went to key his mic again, Cougar turned his focus back to the now-empty porch, but kept his finger well away from the trigger. He knew Clay was going to call the mission; he could read it in his COs voice and body language.

"Sorry, Mission Controller," Clay said, "that last order didn't come through. Our comms must be acting up. Recommend we abort until we can reassess the situation."

"Such a stupid and pointless lie, Colonel Clay," the man said. "Wade?" 

From behind and to Cougar's right, Travis said, "Yeah, boss?" and Cougar's unease was now an almost physical thing, crawling up his spine to settle between his shoulderblades. 

"Take care of the situation. Max out."

Cougar was already rolling onto his back before the transmission fell silent, his sidearm clearing the holster just as he heard the first burst from Travis's M4. He squeezed off four quick shots to Travis's center mass immediately and then, when he'd had a second to actually aim, made a clean headshot and watched him collapse backward.

Off to his right, Pooch was on his ass on the ground, legs bloody but not so bloody that Cougar was worried Travis had hit an artery, and Roque was lowering the HK he'd only managed to get half-raised in the first place. Behind them, Clay was using his right hand to apply pressure to his own left bicep, his M4 hanging loose from its strap. When Cougar caught his eye, Clay shook his head.

"It's only a graze," he said. Cougar raised an eyebrow, looking pointedly at the blood dripping steadily from Clay's fingertips into a growing puddle on the ground, and Clay amended, "A _deep_ graze. I'll be fine." 

Roque slanted a sideways look at Clay and then gave Cougar a tiny nod before kneeling beside Pooch. 

They were pretty far from the cabin and Travis's M4 had a suppressor, but the report from Cougar's sidearm would have carried, and with five shots in a row it was impossible to mistake for anything other than semi-automatic weapons fire. Cougar rolled onto his stomach again and peered through his scope. There was no telling what had happened while his attention had been elsewhere, but everything seemed quiet now. It wasn't like they had time to wait around in any case. 

He gathered up his rifle and the rest of his gear and stowed it all in the Bronco, then started stripping everything useful from Travis's body—weapons and spare magazines, throat mic and earpiece, whatever was still intact in the pockets of his vest—and securing that, as well. He was leaning forward against the tailgate, just sliding the last ammo box under the rear seats, when a hint of color and movement caught his eye.

Roque's head snapped up at his whistle. Cougar nodded at the guy—their former target—who was now slowly circling around the Bronco, hands in the air and not looking anywhere near as nervous as he should have considering the firepower that was currently aimed at him. He made eye contact with each of them in turn, beginning with Cougar, but when he started to speak, it was directly to Clay.

"This is not how I'd planned to do this, not at all, but we're running out of time, so here goes. My name is Jake Jensen and I was a corporal in the US Army until two years ago, when I was assigned to an R&D facility in The Middle of Nowhere, South Dakota. I figured they wanted me for my MOS, but it turned out...not so much. I ended up part of a secret government experiment. They did stuff to me. Stuff—" He hesitated and Cougar could see him swallow, hard. "—stuff I don't really want to talk about. Messed with my brain. It was supposed to turn me into a dangerous telekinetic, a lethal killing machine."

Clay snorted. "Son, I don't doubt that there's _something_ wrong with your brain, but it's not telekinesis." 

The guy—Jensen—was holding himself still in a way that felt less like a simple absence of movement and more like a conscious, focused restraining of it. While Cougar wasn't convinced of the existence of an experimental military program to create soldiers who could kill with a thought, he had no doubt Jensen had been combat trained. The spiky blond hair and hot-pink shirt weren't regulation, but his posture and bearing sure as hell were.

"Man, I was really hoping not to have to do it this way. Okay, fine. I guess a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do." Jensen crossed his arms over his chest, then slanted a look at Cougar and said, "Shoot me."

When Cougar hesitated—glancing over to Clay, who shrugged; permission, but not an order—Jensen sighed. "Come on," he said, like Cougar was denying him something he really wanted. "If you can make 98 percent of your first-round hits at 600 meters, I'm pretty sure you can make a headshot at ten feet."

The numbers were specific; they weren't the stats of the average sniper school graduate, they were _Cougar's_ stats, from his requalification last month, and that was disconcerting. 

"So he knows who we are," Roque said. "Big deal. He's a hacker." 

Jensen didn't respond. Instead, he tilted his head a little to the side, and Cougar felt like Jensen was actually looking at him for the first time, or maybe looking _through_ him. "You really don't want to," he said, like it was a surprise. "You think I'm delusional, but you're not sure I need to die."

It was true. Cougar lifted one shoulder, the barest hint of a shrug, and Jensen shook his head. 

"Jesus," he said. "Well, under other circumstances, I'd say thank you for your compassion, Cougar, but Max's goons are on their way here, so I need _somebody_ to fucking shoot—" He was cut off by the sound of Roque firing a single shot from his HK.

There was no impact, though, no ripe-melon sound and no spray of bone fragments and brain matter. What there was, floating in the air about four inches in front of Jensen's nose, was a 5.56 NATO round. 

"Thank you, Roque," Jensen said. He held out his hand and the round dropped neatly to lie in his palm...for about a tenth of a second, until he dropped it to the ground with a hiss. "Fuck. I always forget they're still hot."

The sound of Pooch's laughter broke the silence.

If it bothered Jensen, he didn't show it. He just grinned at Clay and said, "There you go. Practical demonstration of one half of my awesome mutant powers. The other half isn't nearly as easy to show off, so you'll just have to trust me for the moment when I say I've got some pretty sweet precognition going on, which is how I know that in—" He looks at his watch. "—twenty-eight minutes Max's clean-up crew is going to crash this little party."

"According to the intel we were given," Clay said, and Cougar watched as Jensen's expression closed off more with every word, "Psylocke is responsible for the deaths of over fifty of the United States's best covert operatives. He's good at staying under the radar and covering his tracks, so they haven't been able to get enough hard evidence to arrest him, let alone prosecute." He gave Jensen a pointed look. "Why, exactly, should we trust a known terrorist?"

"Because there are only two ways this can go, Colonel," Jensen said, his posture back to the focused restraint from earlier, "and I mean that literally. I've seen the possibilities, and they pretty much fall into two scenarios: you complete your mission by putting a bullet in my brain, or you work with me to expose Max's schemes. Either way you'll end up legally dead, but at least with me on your side you'll still be breathing."

Cougar's instinct—or whatever it was that had sent unease creeping up his spine when the woman and child had shown up at Jensen's door, and then again when Travis had been about to turn on them—was pushing him in a different direction now. He raised an inquiring eyebrow at Clay and got a small nod in return. Slowly, he re-holstered his sidearm.

Roque frowned. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but what if he's got some kind of mind-control thing?"

"If I had 'some kind of mind-control thing,'" Jensen said over his shoulder from where he was digging around in the back of the Bronco, "would I have had to argue you into shooting me? Would I have even needed to convince you to trust me at all?" He continued rummaging for a moment before pulling out a tarp. 

"I've got the cabin rigged with C-4," he said, and Cougar knelt to help him wrap up Travis's corpse. When they were done, Jensen hefted the bundle onto one shoulder with unnatural ease. "Should make identification more difficult and buy us a little time. I'll be back with new transport in—" He glanced at his watch. "—five minutes."

Cougar watched as he disappeared back into the forest in the direction of his cabin.

"If I die before Jolene has the baby," Pooch said, his words slurring a little—from the pain, or maybe Roque had given him a shot of morphine out of the med kit, Cougar wasn't sure, "she's going to kill me." There was silence for a moment as the team contemplated the truth of that statement, and then he continued, "So I don't know about you all, but I vote for staying alive."

Clay let out a heavy sigh, and for the first time since Cougar met him, he looked his age. "We'll salvage what we can out of the Bronco and leave it behind; if the kid is right about Max sending a team after us, they'll be watching for it."

Roque was just finishing up with Clay's wounded arm, so Cougar gathered up the unused med supplies and started packing them back into the kit. Pooch was lying flat on the ground now, bandaged legs stretched out in front of him and eyes closed, but he was humming softly under his breath, so he was still conscious. High, probably, but conscious.

They'd finished stacking the gear in a neat pile and Cougar and Roque were in the process of helping Pooch up off the ground when Cougar heard the sound of an approaching engine. After a few seconds, the maroon minivan the blonde woman had been driving rounded a bend in the dirt track at speed, Jensen at the wheel. It skidded to a stop a few feet from them, and he leaned across and pushed open the front passenger door. "Come with me if you want to live."

Cougar let out a surprised snort of laughter and Jensen grinned at him, then hopped out and started opening all the doors. "Remote detonator on the explosives," Jensen said, "so we're not trying to beat a timer there, but company will be here in fifteen minutes tops."

Jensen stepped in and took Roque's place at Pooch's side, and while Clay and Roque started loading things into the back of the minivan, Jensen helped Cougar get Pooch settled as comfortably as possible on the first bench seat. The inside of the minivan was surprisingly clean and empty of anything personal; there was no evidence of the woman and child who'd arrived in it, at least as far as Cougar could see.

When Jensen went to climb out and help with the loading, Cougar put a hand on his arm to stop him. "Your wife and daughter, they're safe?" he asked.

"My—" Jensen started, looking puzzled, and then his expression cleared. "Oh, you mean my sister and my niece," he said. "Yeah, they're long gone in my car. I figured the soccer-mom van was inconspicuous and roomy, and we need inconspicuous and roomy more than they do."

The back doors slammed shut, followed by two muffled thuds as Roque signaled that they were loaded and good to go. Cougar grabbed his duffel and slid into the front passenger seat, leaving the remaining bench seat for Clay and Roque. Jensen leaned over and popped open the glove compartment, fishing out a generic-looking cellphone. He tossed it over his shoulder without looking, a smooth arc that would've nailed Roque in the face if he hadn't caught it.

"Number's the only one programmed in," Jensen said, looking in the rear-view mirror as he put the van in gear and started forward. "Why don't you do the honors, Roque. We should be at a safe distance by now. Probably."

"Probably?!" Roque sounded incredulous. "Probably, the man says," he continued to mutter, even as he dialed.

Turned out they were at a safe distance, but it was still one hell of a boom.


End file.
